Fanny Imlay is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on May 14, 2012. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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This article was nominated for deletion on 15 May 2012. The result of the discussion was Snow keep. |
This article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
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This woman is notable how ? For being a total non-entity compared to her slightly notable relatives ? Eregli bob ( talk) 05:54, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
The negative opinions expressed here, as they relate to notability and not the separate issue of what topics to feature on the Main Page, seem to be largely unqualified. Notability is not, and never has been, dependent on the perception by one or more editors that a person has done something significant, worthwhile or interesting. No one has, so far, really and effectively challenged the quality or depth of coverage within reliable sources. It is this, not our personal perceptions of the subject's accomplishments or the interest that her life generates or fails to generate in us, that prove or fail to prove notability. -- Black Falcon ( talk) 18:16, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
Shouldn't the references be about her? The book "Death and the Maidens" was reviewed by Publisher's Weekly as "more of a meditation on the role of all of the women in Byron and Shelley's circle". The other major source of this article, "Mary Wollstonecraft", is a biography of Fanny Imlay's mother. Where are the sources about Imlay herself and not "Imlay-as-adjunct-to-actual-famous-people". HAS anyone written about her in particular? -- Khajidha ( talk) 18:59, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
I have never heard of this person. I do not have any idea why she is notable. And, do you know what? After reading the opening of the article, I still have absolutely no idea why she is notable.
Now, it may well be that after I digest the remainder of the article, I will understand that she really deserves her own article. But, at the very least, this article has a totally inadequate opening, because reading the first few paragraphs simply doesn't convey any idea why I or anyone else should care to read the rest of the article.
In other words: I am not going to argue that she is not notable. Rather, I am arguing that the opening of this article stinks, because it fails to explain why she is notable. -- Yaush ( talk) 19:12, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
This article looks like it was copy-pasted from a long and tedious biography of her. Propose deletion? 2.103.15.209 ( talk) 22:46, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
I've notified Wadewitz ( talk · contribs), the main contributor to this article, about this discussion. Graham 87 01:08, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
OK, y'all. Please take this to AfD. I know which way I will vote. -- jbmurray ( talk • contribs) 01:58, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
"BUT *WHY* DID THAT SCHOLAR MAKE THAT DECISION ? There are books and articles about this woman, but for some reason it isn't possible to state in a single phrase *why* those scholars chose to focus on her, other than the fact she had notable relatives ?"
Oh. My. God. The IP is obviously someone who's been editing Wikipedia for far too long (or a sock of same, to be more accurate). Someone who's been editing for so long that they have come to believe that Wikipedia policies apply to the real world as well. Someone like the nominator behind this AfD.
I grant that there is something to this sentiment, but honestly ... the notability policy was meant to prevent this sort of second-guessing on our port. We reflect the world; we do not edit it.
We may not understand why enough academics wrote scholarly articles about toilet paper orientation for someone here to be able to write an article about it with copious footnotes. But they did, and all we can do is write the article and get it to GA or FA status. It's ours not to reason why, at least not here. Daniel Case ( talk) 01:29, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
Well done, Aylad. By stripping the article of all its accumulated irrelevancies and verbosity, you have discovered the reasons why the subject is, in fact, notable. Could you now do us the kindness of rewriting the header so that the reasons for her notability are made clear to the reader in the first couple of paragraphs? -- Yaush ( talk) 14:45, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
There are two questions that need to be answered.
As for howcheng's complaint, there has to be some background on the Godwin household to provide context for the reader - see WP:PCR (plus it is not the the fault of this article that the Godwin article is not a FA / in as good shape). I also thank Aylad for their work showing how much of the article is about Fanny.
If anyone disagrees with me on these two questions, feel free to take this WP:AfD (for notability) or WP:FAR (not a FA)(but note that FAR has to wait until the time needed after a Main Page appearance has passed). For me this is case closed and any other complaints seem to me to be variations of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 15:03, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
It appears there are only two sides to this discussion: this article sucks and this article is fine no changes needed. We can't help but overstate our points in our anonymity (you buttholes), but all this communication is keeping people from communicating.
I'm supprised everyone's favourate notability test has yet to be proposed; Google search. "Fanny Imlay": a whooping 13,100 results. "Malia Obama": 1,140,000. Enough said. 110.32.140.182 ( talk) 10:07, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
Hit count numbers alone can only rarely "prove" anything about notability, without further discussion of the type of hits, what's been searched for, how it was searched, and what interpretation to give the results.
Daniel Case ( talk) 17:04, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Fanny Imlay is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fanny Imlay until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. -- jbmurray ( talk • contribs) 14:48, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
Are nominations for deletions usually archived within a day of being created? 2.103.15.209 ( talk) 16:00, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
It was less than 6 hours though. People who have this on their watchlist will be editors of this and hence won't want it deleted. They will have learnt of the nomination before anybody else. 2.103.15.209 ( talk) 12:15, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
However ... those statistics don't tell us how big the respective editors watchlists are. Some people, like me, keep their watchlists fairly small. Others have preferences set to put everything they edit on their watchlist, and have lists that are literally thousands of articles long. I think the former group of editors is more likely to respond swiftly to an AfD.
And also, of those 88 users about 5% are IPs who couldn't have a watchlist anyway. Perhaps in this case statistically insignificant (especially since no IP has edited the article more than once). But in other cases, perhaps not. Daniel Case ( talk) 12:38, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
The next two !voters, Ruhrfisch and Johnbod, are both contributors, but to a much lesser extent. Ssilvers, who voted keep, has never edited the article. Neither has phoebe, the next keep vote, and you have to go to Mike Christie, who only edited the article once, before you find someone who has both edited the article and voted keep.
I don't think I need to go on. The pile of keep votes may have as much to do with the discussion being linked from T:MP and the gendergap mailing list (two places I am aware of it being linked from; it also was on the talk pages of some of the keep voters) as it does with the watchlist system.
And, even if it were the case in this or any other AfD, that a cabal of involved editors got to AfD first and circled the wagons to ensure a desired result, policy and consensus be damned, there's always deletion review, which IME is less susceptible to this process.
Lastly, let's note that the stated reason for the AfD closure was procedural ... it's that we usually don't like for main page-linked articles to be up for deletion at the same time. We usually either suspend the AfD or, if it seems there's a valid reason and possible consensus, replace the article on the Main Page. Daniel Case ( talk) 12:58, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
Although Mary Wollstonecraft and Gilbert Imlay lived together happily for brief periods before and after the birth of Fanny, Imlay left Wollstonecraft in France in the midst of the French Revolution.
Since my chief complaint has been lost in the discussion of notability (or lack thereof), I'm going to break it out here: Perusing the daily Featured Article has been part of my daily routine for some time. Some of the featured articles have not particularly interested me, but until now, none has ever left me scratching my head over why the article was noteworthy.
I'm not going to argue that this is because the subject was not, in fact, notable. I'm going to argue that the header does a terrible job of explaining, in the very first paragraph or two, why Fanny Imlay was notable. The header rambles all over the place without managing to answer that fairly important question. -- Yaush ( talk) 16:40, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
I am reading Janet Todd's Death and the Maidens and it mentioned that Fanny had smallpox as a very small child, and subsequently had chickenpox and scratched her face, so she had pretty noticable pox / scarring (pp. 22, 47). I think this should probably be mentioned in the article, but wanted to see what others thought. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 02:10, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
so it would read Three-year-old Fanny, who had been scarred from smallpox, was unofficially adopted by her stepfather and given the name of Godwin. (add ref too)
Feedback? Ruhrfisch ><>°° 15:19, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
"Duty kept her with us; but I am afraid her affections were with them."
— William Godwin on Fanny Godwin [1]
Having read Janet Todd's Death and the Maidens (the primary source for this article), I have two suggested tweaks.
1) Add this quote by William Godwin (quoted on page xi in Todd) in a blue background quote box (like the two other boxes already in the article) towards the end of the article, probably in the Suicide and aftermath section. Godwin essentially adopted Fanny after her mother died and she called him Papa. Todd's book makes clear how torn she was between Godwin's hosuehold (where she lived), and the Shelley household (with her half sister Mary and stepsister Claire).
2) Tweak the lead. Todd's book and the rest of the article are very careful about presenting the facts as known separate from speculation - it is likely that Fanny "was in love with" Shelley, but no one knows for sure now. Todd's book does not say so and the article only says In 1814, Shelley spent a considerable amount of time at the Godwins' and he and Imlay may have fallen in love. But the lead flatly states "Fanny was in love with Percy Bysshe Shelley". I think the sentence after this is too vague and would be better with specifics. The current first paragraph of the lead ends as follows:
How about something like
Ruhrfisch ><>°° 05:18, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
References
Why did it take four years from the time it was promoted in 2008 (when standards were probably different) to appearing on the MP in 2012? Were any other reviews done during this period? Froggerlaura ribbit 02:38, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
Fanny Imlay is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on May 14, 2012. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
This article was nominated for deletion on 15 May 2012. The result of the discussion was Snow keep. |
This article is rated FA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||
|
|
This woman is notable how ? For being a total non-entity compared to her slightly notable relatives ? Eregli bob ( talk) 05:54, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
The negative opinions expressed here, as they relate to notability and not the separate issue of what topics to feature on the Main Page, seem to be largely unqualified. Notability is not, and never has been, dependent on the perception by one or more editors that a person has done something significant, worthwhile or interesting. No one has, so far, really and effectively challenged the quality or depth of coverage within reliable sources. It is this, not our personal perceptions of the subject's accomplishments or the interest that her life generates or fails to generate in us, that prove or fail to prove notability. -- Black Falcon ( talk) 18:16, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
Shouldn't the references be about her? The book "Death and the Maidens" was reviewed by Publisher's Weekly as "more of a meditation on the role of all of the women in Byron and Shelley's circle". The other major source of this article, "Mary Wollstonecraft", is a biography of Fanny Imlay's mother. Where are the sources about Imlay herself and not "Imlay-as-adjunct-to-actual-famous-people". HAS anyone written about her in particular? -- Khajidha ( talk) 18:59, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
I have never heard of this person. I do not have any idea why she is notable. And, do you know what? After reading the opening of the article, I still have absolutely no idea why she is notable.
Now, it may well be that after I digest the remainder of the article, I will understand that she really deserves her own article. But, at the very least, this article has a totally inadequate opening, because reading the first few paragraphs simply doesn't convey any idea why I or anyone else should care to read the rest of the article.
In other words: I am not going to argue that she is not notable. Rather, I am arguing that the opening of this article stinks, because it fails to explain why she is notable. -- Yaush ( talk) 19:12, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
This article looks like it was copy-pasted from a long and tedious biography of her. Propose deletion? 2.103.15.209 ( talk) 22:46, 14 May 2012 (UTC)
I've notified Wadewitz ( talk · contribs), the main contributor to this article, about this discussion. Graham 87 01:08, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
OK, y'all. Please take this to AfD. I know which way I will vote. -- jbmurray ( talk • contribs) 01:58, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
"BUT *WHY* DID THAT SCHOLAR MAKE THAT DECISION ? There are books and articles about this woman, but for some reason it isn't possible to state in a single phrase *why* those scholars chose to focus on her, other than the fact she had notable relatives ?"
Oh. My. God. The IP is obviously someone who's been editing Wikipedia for far too long (or a sock of same, to be more accurate). Someone who's been editing for so long that they have come to believe that Wikipedia policies apply to the real world as well. Someone like the nominator behind this AfD.
I grant that there is something to this sentiment, but honestly ... the notability policy was meant to prevent this sort of second-guessing on our port. We reflect the world; we do not edit it.
We may not understand why enough academics wrote scholarly articles about toilet paper orientation for someone here to be able to write an article about it with copious footnotes. But they did, and all we can do is write the article and get it to GA or FA status. It's ours not to reason why, at least not here. Daniel Case ( talk) 01:29, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
Well done, Aylad. By stripping the article of all its accumulated irrelevancies and verbosity, you have discovered the reasons why the subject is, in fact, notable. Could you now do us the kindness of rewriting the header so that the reasons for her notability are made clear to the reader in the first couple of paragraphs? -- Yaush ( talk) 14:45, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
There are two questions that need to be answered.
As for howcheng's complaint, there has to be some background on the Godwin household to provide context for the reader - see WP:PCR (plus it is not the the fault of this article that the Godwin article is not a FA / in as good shape). I also thank Aylad for their work showing how much of the article is about Fanny.
If anyone disagrees with me on these two questions, feel free to take this WP:AfD (for notability) or WP:FAR (not a FA)(but note that FAR has to wait until the time needed after a Main Page appearance has passed). For me this is case closed and any other complaints seem to me to be variations of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 15:03, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
It appears there are only two sides to this discussion: this article sucks and this article is fine no changes needed. We can't help but overstate our points in our anonymity (you buttholes), but all this communication is keeping people from communicating.
I'm supprised everyone's favourate notability test has yet to be proposed; Google search. "Fanny Imlay": a whooping 13,100 results. "Malia Obama": 1,140,000. Enough said. 110.32.140.182 ( talk) 10:07, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
Hit count numbers alone can only rarely "prove" anything about notability, without further discussion of the type of hits, what's been searched for, how it was searched, and what interpretation to give the results.
Daniel Case ( talk) 17:04, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Fanny Imlay is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fanny Imlay until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. -- jbmurray ( talk • contribs) 14:48, 15 May 2012 (UTC)
Are nominations for deletions usually archived within a day of being created? 2.103.15.209 ( talk) 16:00, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
It was less than 6 hours though. People who have this on their watchlist will be editors of this and hence won't want it deleted. They will have learnt of the nomination before anybody else. 2.103.15.209 ( talk) 12:15, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
However ... those statistics don't tell us how big the respective editors watchlists are. Some people, like me, keep their watchlists fairly small. Others have preferences set to put everything they edit on their watchlist, and have lists that are literally thousands of articles long. I think the former group of editors is more likely to respond swiftly to an AfD.
And also, of those 88 users about 5% are IPs who couldn't have a watchlist anyway. Perhaps in this case statistically insignificant (especially since no IP has edited the article more than once). But in other cases, perhaps not. Daniel Case ( talk) 12:38, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
The next two !voters, Ruhrfisch and Johnbod, are both contributors, but to a much lesser extent. Ssilvers, who voted keep, has never edited the article. Neither has phoebe, the next keep vote, and you have to go to Mike Christie, who only edited the article once, before you find someone who has both edited the article and voted keep.
I don't think I need to go on. The pile of keep votes may have as much to do with the discussion being linked from T:MP and the gendergap mailing list (two places I am aware of it being linked from; it also was on the talk pages of some of the keep voters) as it does with the watchlist system.
And, even if it were the case in this or any other AfD, that a cabal of involved editors got to AfD first and circled the wagons to ensure a desired result, policy and consensus be damned, there's always deletion review, which IME is less susceptible to this process.
Lastly, let's note that the stated reason for the AfD closure was procedural ... it's that we usually don't like for main page-linked articles to be up for deletion at the same time. We usually either suspend the AfD or, if it seems there's a valid reason and possible consensus, replace the article on the Main Page. Daniel Case ( talk) 12:58, 18 May 2012 (UTC)
Although Mary Wollstonecraft and Gilbert Imlay lived together happily for brief periods before and after the birth of Fanny, Imlay left Wollstonecraft in France in the midst of the French Revolution.
Since my chief complaint has been lost in the discussion of notability (or lack thereof), I'm going to break it out here: Perusing the daily Featured Article has been part of my daily routine for some time. Some of the featured articles have not particularly interested me, but until now, none has ever left me scratching my head over why the article was noteworthy.
I'm not going to argue that this is because the subject was not, in fact, notable. I'm going to argue that the header does a terrible job of explaining, in the very first paragraph or two, why Fanny Imlay was notable. The header rambles all over the place without managing to answer that fairly important question. -- Yaush ( talk) 16:40, 16 May 2012 (UTC)
I am reading Janet Todd's Death and the Maidens and it mentioned that Fanny had smallpox as a very small child, and subsequently had chickenpox and scratched her face, so she had pretty noticable pox / scarring (pp. 22, 47). I think this should probably be mentioned in the article, but wanted to see what others thought. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 02:10, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
so it would read Three-year-old Fanny, who had been scarred from smallpox, was unofficially adopted by her stepfather and given the name of Godwin. (add ref too)
Feedback? Ruhrfisch ><>°° 15:19, 26 July 2012 (UTC)
"Duty kept her with us; but I am afraid her affections were with them."
— William Godwin on Fanny Godwin [1]
Having read Janet Todd's Death and the Maidens (the primary source for this article), I have two suggested tweaks.
1) Add this quote by William Godwin (quoted on page xi in Todd) in a blue background quote box (like the two other boxes already in the article) towards the end of the article, probably in the Suicide and aftermath section. Godwin essentially adopted Fanny after her mother died and she called him Papa. Todd's book makes clear how torn she was between Godwin's hosuehold (where she lived), and the Shelley household (with her half sister Mary and stepsister Claire).
2) Tweak the lead. Todd's book and the rest of the article are very careful about presenting the facts as known separate from speculation - it is likely that Fanny "was in love with" Shelley, but no one knows for sure now. Todd's book does not say so and the article only says In 1814, Shelley spent a considerable amount of time at the Godwins' and he and Imlay may have fallen in love. But the lead flatly states "Fanny was in love with Percy Bysshe Shelley". I think the sentence after this is too vague and would be better with specifics. The current first paragraph of the lead ends as follows:
How about something like
Ruhrfisch ><>°° 05:18, 26 May 2012 (UTC)
References
Why did it take four years from the time it was promoted in 2008 (when standards were probably different) to appearing on the MP in 2012? Were any other reviews done during this period? Froggerlaura ribbit 02:38, 26 July 2012 (UTC)